Lithuania · Partial ruin
Trakai Peninsula Castle
Trakų pusiasalio pilis
Trakai Peninsula Castle is a medieval brick-and-stone fortress on a narrow peninsula between Lake Galvė and Lake Luka in Trakai, Lithuania. Built in the 14th century by Kęstutis, it was an important defensive stronghold; much of it was destroyed in the 17th century and today surviving walls and towers are preserved as part of the Trakai Historical National Park.
Its prime
1400
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1400
What Trakai Peninsula Castle looked like in its prime.
A compact medieval fortress of red brick rising from a rough fieldstone plinth, with a continuous roughly 10 m high curtain wall linking multiple square towers. The three largest towers on the southwestern flank are substantial 15 × 15 m brick blocks capped with steep red-tiled hip roofs. Narrow vertical slit and lancet windows are set in the brickwork; patches of white plaster cling to the upper walls. Small steep-roofed masonry annexes step down to the rocky shore of the peninsula between two lakes, with trees close around.
Its story
The story of Trakai Peninsula Castle.
Kęstutis Builds on the Peninsula, 1350-1430
Kęstutis, Duke of Trakai, raised the castle on the peninsula between Lake Galvė and Lake Luka in about 1350-1377, an important defensive structure covering Trakai and Vilnius, capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, against the attacks of the Teutonic Knights. Seven towers stood linked by a wall ten metres high. The three largest, fifteen metres square, protected the most vulnerable south-western flank, and a moat twelve to fourteen metres wide cut the castle off from the town.
The list of Russian towns compiled between 1387 and 1392 notes a castle beside the lake at Trakai with two masonry walls and a wooden upper castle. Around 1400 a stone wall and a broad defensive ditch separated it from the town. The masonry work itself went forward in two campaigns, from 1362 to 1382 and again from 1414 to 1430.
Two Civil Wars and the Murder of Sigismund Kęstutaitis, 1382-1440
The castle was attacked in 1382 and 1383, during the civil war of 1381-1384, and again in 1390 during the civil war of 1389-1392. After the Treaty of Melno in 1422 it lost its significance as a defensive structure. The Grand Dukes are known to have used it as a residence. Sigismund Kęstutaitis was murdered in the castle on 20 March 1440.
Prison, Ruin and the Dominicans, 1500s-1800s
It was rebuilt at some point after Sigismund's death, and in the sixteenth century it was used as a prison. It was destroyed in the Russo-Polish War of 1654-1667, in the wars with Russia and Sweden that ran through the middle of the seventeenth century, and never rebuilt. Its purpose changed after that: it held prisoners of high birth, enemies of the state.
In 1678 Marcjan Aleksander Ogiński, Voivode of Trakai, granted the territory to a Dominican cloister, though it was not until the 1770s that the monks eventually built their monastery and church; those buildings are part of the castle ensemble. Under the tsars the site housed the police and the court.
Conservation, Occupation and the National Park, 1929-1999
The ruins were conserved in 1929. During the Second World War the Gestapo operated in the castle, and in the post-war years it held a KGB prison. One defensive tower, thirteen metres high, was restored after the war. The remaining walls and towers are preserved and protected by the Trakai Historical National Park, and a medieval festival has been held at the castle every year since 1999.
Step inside
6 places to explore in 1400.
The record describes 6 distinct spots at Trakai Peninsula Castle, including 1 interior: interior chamber inside a principal tower. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Trakai Peninsula Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1400, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Defend this castle →
